Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Further, many such cellular telephones are being manufactured with relatively large increases in computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs. However, these smaller and more powerful personal computing devices are typically severely resource constrained. For example, the screen size, amount of available memory and file system space, amount of input and output capabilities and processing capability may each be limited by the small size of the device. Because of such severe resource constraints, it is often typically desirable, for example, to maintain a limited size and quantity of software applications and other information residing on such remote personal computing devices (client devices).
FIG. 1 depicts a high level communication architecture for wireless devices in which wireless devices 100, 102 are connected to a wireless network 104 and a server 108 by way of the communication network. Server 108 stores content 110 in a storage medium (not shown), e.g., hard disk, memory, floppy disk, or other storage mechanism. Content 110 includes, for example, audio and video files, text files, application files, address book contents, etc., for transfer between server 108 and wireless device 100 or between wireless devices 100, 102. Wireless device 100 stores content 112 which may be content 110 obtained from server 108 via wireless network 104 or content (not shown) transferred to the wireless device by a user of the wireless device using a wired, e.g., cable connection, or wireless, e.g., infra-red protocol, Bluetooth wireless protocol, WiFi protocol, etc. connection to a processing device such as a computer system (not shown). For example, the user may transfer audio files from a home computer system to the wireless device.
FIG. 2 depicts a message sequence chart of operation of the transfer of content 110 from server 108 to wireless device 100. Wireless device 100 establishes a network connection (message sequence 200) with wireless network 104. After establishment of the network connection, wireless device 100 requests content 110 from server 108 (message sequence 202) by issuing a content request message. Responsive to receipt of the content request message from wireless device 100, server 108 transmits (message sequence 204) content 110 to wireless device 100 using network 104. After receipt of content 110, wireless device 100 may store the content in a storage medium (not shown) of the wireless device for later use.
If content transfer controls are not in place on wireless device 100, content that is unprotected from redistribution transferred to wireless device 100, whether from server 108 or a computer system of the user (not shown), may be transferred to other wireless devices, such as wireless device 102, without regard for any potential licensing issues. For example, content 110 may be a purchased audio file with terms restricting further distribution or use beyond wireless device 100.